1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a microwave oven, and more particularly, to an improved microwave oven which increases a cooking chamber capacity thereof while minimizing the oven size.
2. Description of the Background Art
FIG. 1 is an exploded perspective view illustrating the composition of a conventional microwave oven, and FIG. 2 is a schematic cross-sectional view taken along line I-I' in FIG. 1 to show a cavity structure of the conventional microwave oven.
The conventional microwave oven includes a cavity 1 formed by a plurality of plates 3, 4, 5, 6. The cavity 1 is completed by covering an outer case 8.
The formation of the cavity 1 will now be described.
First, the front plate 3 is installed at the front part of the cavity 1. The back plate 4 is installed at the rear part of the cavity 1.
Also, the lower plate 5 is installed to form a lower surface and both side surfaces of the cavity 1. An upper plate 6 is provided to serve as a ceiling. A base plate 7 is provided to form a lower surface of the mechanical room is disposed underneath the lower plate 5 to thereby form a lower surface of a machine chamber 9.
The cooking chamber 2 formed in the interior of the cavity 1 has several unnecessary vacant spaces which serve to decrease the capacity thereof: one between the upper plate 6 forming the ceiling of the cooking chamber 2 and the outer case 8 forming the outer casing of the microwave oven; another the lower plate 5 forming the bottom surface of the cooking chamber 2 and the base plate 7; and still another between a side surface of the lower plate 5 and a side surface of the outer case 8.
Although a turntable rotating motor (not shown) or an additional heater (not shown) can be furnished in such vacant spaces as described above, most of the spaces are left over unemployed.
As described above, the conventional microwave oven has a disadvantage in that the size of the microwave oven tends to be unnecessarily large when compared to the capacity of the cooking chamber formed within the cavity.